Revenge of the nerds

THEY'RE not just in their bedrooms, talking in internet chatrooms and playing World Of Warfare, the geeks are at San Diego's Comic-Con, deciding which movies are going to be the Next Big Thing. Sandro Monetti joined them.

Geeksa at Comic-Con in San Diego are deciding what's going to be the next big thing

BOASTING greater star power than the Oscars and more crazy fashions than a Lady Gaga gig, the world’s biggest pop culture convention, Comic-Con, is currently underway in San Diego.

A-listers such as Angelina Jolie, Bruce Willis and Nicolas Cage are rubbing shoulders with 126,000 obsessive geeks, most of whom are dressed as their favourite superhero or comic book character.

The celebs know that what these amateur bloggers say, write or Tweet about first footage from forthcoming films unveiled here is proven to make or break potential blockbusters.

Hollywood long ago realised that Comic-Con was more important than Cannes, Sundance or any other film festival for spreading the word and creating buzz on upcoming projects. Avatar, for example, was the hit of last year’s convention and went on to become the highest earning release of all time.

Sylvester Stallone and Bruce Willis make a surprise visit

So while video games, TV shows, comic books and action figures are also part of the sold-out annual extravaganza, it’s the chance to launch the next big movie which has brought out big names like Sylvester Stallone and Jeff Bridges to talk with the nerdy fans. Comic-Con 2010 has also drawn British stars Helen Mirren, Simon Pegg, Michael Sheen and Kenneth Branagh to plug their newest projects.

At no other event do stars like these risk facing as many jeers as cheers, as this hard-to-please audience will make it instantly clear what advance footage screened in the giant convention halls scores and which sucks.

Los Angeles Times film critic Betsy Sharkey says: “The fans here can make or break a film. Comic-Con is the one place to find truth-tellers who will shout their likes and dislikes long and loud. They don’t care how acclaimed the director, how bright the star: if you don’t measure up to their very high bar, they will flay you.

“When Halle Berry presented clips from Catwoman in the wake of her Oscar win for Monster’s Ball, the screams and howls from the crowd sent chills down the studio’s spine. This convention has rapidly blown up into a giant focus group, one that’s featured in real time on the internet.”

Greg Mottola, the director of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost’s new sci-fi comedy Paul, believes the crowd here are notoriously hard to impress. He said: “You could probably bring an actual alien to Comic-Con and people would be a little disappointed.”

Despite that he’s still screening the first footage from his movie, about two British geeks on a road trip across America who pick up an alien hitchhiker, in the hope it becomes the breakout hit of the festival but many other promising films are competing to win the geek love and get that title.

They include R.E.D. (Retired Extremely Dangerous) which finds Dame Helen Mirren in a wildly different role as a retired secret agent who picks up her guns again and blasts into action when CIA bad guys mark her for death and another spy film, timely thriller Salt, in which Angelina Jolie is a glamorous gunslinger accused of being an Anna Chapman-style Russian mole.

Other hopefuls are Cowboys and Aliens, with Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig fighting space invaders in the Wild West; Tron: Legacy, which sees Oscar winner Jeff Bridges back in the long-awaited sequel to his 1982 cult film about a man stuck inside a computer mainframe; a Katie Holmes haunted house movie called Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark and Scott Pilgrim Vs The World in which a regular guy must fight his dream woman’s seven ex-boyfriends to win her love.

Then there are all the superhero movies, such as Captain America, Thor (directed by Branagh), animated effort Megamind with the voice of Brad Pitt and The Green Lantern starring Ryan Reynolds, whose wife Scarlett Johansson has just played Black Widow in Iron Man 2. Ryan says: “As a result of researching these roles, we have a lot of comic books lying around the house now, more than the average young married couple.”

Comic-Con 2010 started on Thursday and concludes today and there has been massive competition over the four days to stage the most spectacular or unusual event to capture the attention of the convention goers.

Star Trek legend William Shatner is an old pro at such things and invited fans to the deck of the USS Midway, an aircraft carrier docked in San Diego harbour, where he launched his new social networking site, a rival to My Space that he calls MyOuterSpace.com.

Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis and much of the rest of the all-star cast of mercenaries on a mission movie The Expendables presented the first public screening of their film for troops at the nearby Camp Pendleton military base.

Films without star power are using bizarre marketing tricks to win attention. As a promotion for the new horror film Buried, convention-goers are being invited to be buried alive in a coffin for up to 30 minutes and have their experience filmed and broadcast live on the internet.

Yet some of the most popular events of the past few days have been promoting nothing else but having a good time with fellow film fans, such as last night’s Zombie Walk, where hundreds of horror movie enthusiasts pretended to be undead by shambling along together through downtown San Diego.

With big stars and huge crowds, Comic-Con has grown so much from its humble beginnings back in 1970 as a small gathering of comic book lovers. Back then it was held in the basement room of a San Diego hotel and there was certainly no one on hand at that nerdfest who looked remotely as glamorous as Angelina Jolie.